Distant Thunders (54 page)

“What the hell?” Gray murmured. The launch’s engine seemed to attract someone’s attention, because as the bow nudged against the sand, a figure stood up from behind hasty-looking breastworks.

“Captain Reddy, is that you?” came a cry. The men and ’Cats jumped out of the boat and advanced. Other faces, eyes drooping with fatigue, peered over the breastworks as they approached.

“My God, Lieutenant Laumer?” Matt asked incredulously. The scruffy beard and tattered clothes left the man almost unrecognizable.

“Yes, sir, it’s me!” Laumer said, grinning. He looked out at the Lagoon. “
Walker
, sir! There she is! Boy, is she a sight for sore eyes! Looks almost new!”

“What happened here, Lieutenant?” Matt asked, glancing at one of the dead creatures. It did look something like a lobster, although it was skinnier, proportionately, and appeared less heavily armored. The head was different and the leg arrangement looked more like a spider’s. The pincers were long and tapered like a scorpion’s. Most of the corpses looked like they’d been blown open fairly easily with bullets.

“Well, sir, we’ve been making decent progress on the boat. She should be ready for sea before long. We put diesel in her tanks and have one engine running. The problem is getting her off the beach. We were going to use
Simms
to dredge a channel, kind of kedge it out, but Captain Lelaa hasn’t returned from her mission to intercept Billingsly.” He looked down. “I was sorry to hear about . . . what happened at Baalkpan.”

“Yes, well, chasing him is our business now. I hate to tell you, but Billingsly and
Ajax
destroyed
Simms
and a felucca commanded by the High Chief of Paga-Daan. Captain Lelaa may have been aboard
Ajax
when it happened, but there were few survivors otherwise. I’m sorry,” he added when he saw Laumer’s stricken expression.

“But . . .” Irvin straightened. “That leaves us in kind of a tight spot,” he said.

“I’ll say,” said Gray. “What the hell happened here?”

Irvin rubbed his nose. “A few weeks ago, one of these things got in our basin. Killed one of our guys. We killed it, but it wasn’t easy. Scary as they look, they’re not only quick on their feet, but they can squirt a jet of water like a cannon shot!”

“Indeed?” muttered Bradford, stooping to examine the head of one of the things.

“Yeah. Anyway, we didn’t see any more for a while, but then, day before yesterday, the mountain let loose, bigger than it has yet. We had critters coming at us out of the woods and we figured we’d better fort up. Next thing we knew, all these spider-lobsters, or whatever they are, started charging up on the beach. It started slow, just a few at a time, but it kept growing, so we threw up another breastwork here until we had a little fort. Dug like maniacs! We finished just in time, because the next thing we knew, there were dozens, hundreds of the things! Just about shot ourselves dry.” He shook his head. “The situation looked pretty bleak without more ammo. The new loads work okay, but they sure foul up a gun. The Thompson completely seized up a couple of times and we had to dump it in water.”

Matt took a breath and looked longingly at the submarine. “You’ve done a great job here, Lieutenant, but I think you should prepare to evacuate. We have some ammunition we could leave with you, but not much more than it would take to drive off another assault like this one. Another supply ship is on its way, but it may not arrive in time to kedge out your channel. This mission has already gone above and beyond what I ever expected of you.”

Irvin set his jaw. Later, Matt would realize that he probably hadn’t chosen those last words very well. “Sir,” Laumer said, “with all respect, I think we’ve earned the right to finish this job.” He looked around at the nods of his crew. “We don’t know if the spider-lobsters will even come back. It might have been a onetime deal. Lots of weird stuff going on.” He gestured at the mountain. “I think it has something to do with that. The thing is, if it blows its top, we’ll never get this boat out of here!”

“If it does that, there won’t be enough left of any of you to catch in a butterfly net!” Gray said.

Irvin nodded. “Maybe. But damn it, Captain, we’re almost done! All we need is a couple of weeks with a ship, an anchor, and a windlass!”

“And no storms to fill everything you’ve done in with sand!” Gray added.

“That would be nice,” Irvin admitted.

Matt rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Like I told you once, we need that boat, but we need you and your people more. Here’s the deal. We’ll leave you a transmitter and a receiver. If things get hairy, there’ll be no goofing around! You call for help, understand? Paga-Daan can have a felucca here to pick your people up in just a few days. Leave all the equipment. The same goes for when the supply ship arrives. Use it however you need to, but if things get bad, get the hell out, understood?”

Irvin sighed with relief. For a moment, he’d seen failure staring him in the face and only Captain Reddy could have pronounced that sentence upon him. No storm or spider-lobsters or even a volcano was going to stop him, but Captain Reddy could have. He saluted. “Thanks, sir. We
will
succeed!”

Matt was moody as
Walker
steamed out of the lagoon and into the open Pacific. He’d begun to realize the effect his words might have had on Laumer, and even though he hadn’t meant to, he’d practically challenged the young lieutenant to stay. He felt like a heel. He got up from his chair and stepped to the chart table. Kutas had marked the spot where they should rendezvous with Jenks, according to the latest position fixes O’Casey sent. One more day, maybe two, and they’d slow their sprint and take station with the Imperial frigate, maintaining visual contact, but sweeping east while covering the widest possible area. Apparently, the Empire had a few settlements in the Marshall Islands, but according to Jenks, they were notoriously independent places. Billingsly would find no haven there. He must be making for one of the main islands of the Hawaiian chain, probably New Ireland, as Jenks referred to it. The island was a Company hotbed and the center of its administration. New Scotland—was the primary naval base, and Hawaii itself was New Britain. None of the islands seemed “right” to Matt, when he’d looked at Jenks’s charts. Their shapes were distinctly changed from what he remembered. Most geographic differences they’d discovered so far were subtle, but the “Hawaiian” chain was more radically altered. He wondered why that was.

Walker
could just barely make it to Hawaii before her bunkers ran dry, but what then? Matt was counting on the tankers following them to the Marshalls—if their crews didn’t chicken out or if mountain fish didn’t eat them. Regardless,
Walker
would be stuck there until she could refuel. He didn’t know what awaited them in New Britain, but he wasn’t going to arrive with empty bunkers. All he and Jenks could hope to do was catch Billingsly somewhere in the wide expanses that separated the Carolines.

“We’re coming for you, you son of a bitch!” he muttered under his breath.

“
Y
ou may tell Captain Rajendra he can ask to speak to the mo on if he likes,” Princess Rebecca retorted sharply, “and he will be much more likely to get what he wants than by asking to speak to me!”

“But, Your Highness!” the boy in the passageway whispered urgently, “the captain had no choice! If he had refused the order, he would have been placed under arrest! How then could he assist you and your friends?”

“He is a dispassionate murderer,” Rebecca proclaimed. “A stain upon the honor of the Navy and the Empire!”

“Now, hold on just a second,” Silva whispered in the darkness. It was almost pitch-black in the brig. They were supposed to be asleep, and no lights were allowed at this time of night. “Rajendra wants us to trust him, does he? How does he mean to make us?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean
why
should we trust him? We need proof. Real proof, not just a extra piece o’ cheese.”

“Well . . . what do you want?”

“I want my goddamn guns, but I bet they’d be missed. They keepin’ ’em in the armory? The magazine?”

“The aft magazine,” replied the boy. “It is the most secure place on the ship. The Marines’ arms are stored there as well, with ready ammunition. Besides, your largest gun would not fit in a weapons locker.”

“Hmm. You’re prob’ly right, at that. Tell you what. I want three things. First, I want a key to this here lock.”

“But—”

“Lookie here, you want us to trust him or not? It ain’t like we’re gonna break out an’ run loose all over the ship. I just want a key to where I can get us outta here if the time comes. ’Sides, what if the ship gets ate by one o’ them big fish? We’d be stuck in here.” That thought actually gave Silva the creeps. Earlier that day, the great guns had opened up, firing furiously for some time. Three full broadsides. At first they thought a battle was under way, until they heard the guns had been used to frighten off a mountain fish.

“Very well. I will see what I can do.”

“Next thing I want is our position. Our exact position!”

“Why?”

“Never you mind. If we take to trustin’ you, we’ll tell you why. One other thing. I want a lantern. A little one so we can look at our map in the dark. It’s too hard to go over it in the daytime ’cause you never know when somebody’s peekin’ in the door at us.”

“I have a one-sided lantern in my quarters,” said the boy. Dennis knew he was a midshipman or something and he actually did trust him, at least. For one thing, the little guy was clearly terrified of Billingsly.

“That sounds fine, just fine. You do that, and maybe I can talk the princess into speakin’ a word or two to Rajendra if he happens to mosey by.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“You bet. Now run along before you get caught—but before you go, there’s one last, final little thing.”

“Sir?”

“I want all that stuff tonight, see?”

“I . . . I will do my best,” whispered the boy a little shakily. They heard his quiet footsteps retreat.

Silva turned to the others in the brig. He couldn’t really see more than dark shapes in the gloom, but he knew where everyone was. “Good work, li’l sister,” he said to Rebecca. “He seemed ready to pee himself. I figger somethin’s up and Rajendra thinks he’d better do somethin’ before it’s too late.”

“It does seem that way,” Sandra said in a worried tone. “Maybe they think they’re safe enough from pursuit that they can get rid of the ‘extra’ hostages.”

“I fear that may be the case,” Rebecca said. “Billingsly no longer even pretends to care what I do or where I go. Nor does he seem to think it important to maintain the fiction of my status aboard. He may plan to eliminate more than us.”

Silva doubted Billingsly was through with Rebecca yet, but she might be right about the rest. “Cap’n Lelaa?” he asked.

“Rajendra is a murderer,” she said miserably. She’d been badly traumatized by the destruction of her ship, and for quite a while, all she’d done was lie curled in a ball in a corner of the cell. Finally, however, she’d begun to take some interest in their situation. She was a naval officer and she couldn’t indulge in self-pity forever. Silva was glad she was snapping out of it. When things hit the fan, they were going to have to move fast. He knew Sandra, Rebecca, and Lawrence had plenty of guts, but though he didn’t dislike her, he considered Sister Audry a deadweight. He didn’t need another one to worry about when the time came.

“Yeah, I guess he’s a murderer,” Silva said, “but so am I, by most lights. If the kid’s right, he did what he
thought
he had to so’s to stay where he might help Rebecca. I’m not plumb sure that
is
what he had to do, but I’ll give him the doubt for now, ’cause I wadn’t there. Somebody else mighta just blown your ship to hell if he didn’t, an’ then where’d we be? He
did
give us a map, even if it’s kind of crummy.”

They’d spent many days explaining maps to Lawrence, describing them as pictures of the world from high in the sky, as if drawn by some bird that could fly higher than the eye could see. It finally began to sink in, and then they showed him places they’d been: Talaud, the Philippines, even as far west as Baalkpan, though the map was so out-of-date in that respect as to be almost useless. Between Lawrence and Rebecca’s imperfect memory of how long and in which directions they’d drifted in her boat with O’Casey, they pieced together which island or atoll they thought they’d found Lawrence on in the first place. Finally, from that, Lawrence was able to pinpoint roughly where he thought his home island was. “There is no land called Tagran on the chart, though,” he’d accused, “and I ne’er saw it fro’ the sky. I think it is this, though,” he’d decided, pointing at a rough rendition of what Silva thought was Yap Island. He’d never been there, but he’d seen plenty of charts and the screwy name had always stuck with him.

“Okay, I hope you’re right,” Silva had replied. “So long as they don’t eat us.”

Lawrence had glared at him and hissed. “They’ll take care o’ all o’ us. La’rence ’riends their ’riends! You all heroes, ring La’rence to Tagran Island land,” he’d said.

It wasn’t much, but it was a chance. An escape attempt to Talaud or even Mindanao would have been their best bet, but Abel had still been weak, and tension before and after
Ajax
’s confrontation with Lelaa’s ships had made any attempt then impossible. Now that Billingsly knew there were no other Allied outposts, security surrounding them had grown lax. They were down to only two choices: they could stay aboard and risk whatever fate Billingsly had in store for them, or they could try to get off the ship and hope Lawrence’s Grik-like people would take them in.

For some reason, Silva didn’t seem particularly concerned with the mechanics of escape. He apparently thought Rajendra could be trusted, for selfish reasons at least, and believed his assistance might be handy, if not necessarily essential. Evidently, he didn’t even think he needed the key he’d asked for. He’d probably just thrown in the request as a further test of Rajendra. Ever since he started feeling more like himself, he’d given the impression that escape was just a matter of Sandra deciding when. According to the map, their approximate speed and position, and Lawrence’s best estimate regarding which island was his home, “when” would have to be the following night. That was when
Ajax
would pass most closely to the island where he thought his people dwelt.